S'mores

So afternoon snack at our center had been a little bit interesting this week as the person who does the shopping was away until today. So while the cook was picking up things for lunch no one seemed to remember about afternoon snack until we were looking at the menu and saying “hmmm, well we don’t have that . . . “ So it became a little bit of a cleaning out the cupboard week (which I always think is a good thing as it helps keep waste to a minimum.) So yesterday we noticed that there was a box of cake mix in the cupboard and went “okay let’s make that tomorrow.” However we discovered that at some point this idea needs to be communicated to the person who would actually make the cake . . . FAIL! So once again it was just before snack time and we are scratching our head going now what? When genius happened . . .

Our cook found this is the cupboard . . .  

It was donated by a parent and neither the cook nor my supervisor know what it was or what it was for (my supervisor had never heard of s’mores and thought it was a box of marshmallows.) And I got really excited! So I quickly made this . . .

And we had an impromptu cooking experience.

The kids in my group are very young so we needed to read out the instruction and there was a lot of hands on help from teachers. We also had to convince them that eating the chocolate and marshmallows right away wasn’t the best idea and that it would get better. But in the end the kids seemed to like following the steps written on the paper (one child wanted even more steps!) and in the end they all had a great time getting all gooey and covered in food (some got more on their face than in it!!) and because we had the kids making snack and there was a little bit of cooking/ cooling time (which we filled with songs) snack ended up lasting almost an hour instead of the normal 15 minutes! Great way to fill an afternoon!

In the end the kids requested more cooking experiences like this and I can’t wait to comply! I have also decided to laminate the recipe I made and when we get enough I will make a cooking book of stuff we made so they can look at it whenever they want . . . I think I will post a copy of our s’mores recipe in the house center for now so they can discuss it, I will have to see where it goes from there!